In an emergency or like incident or event, public safety (PS) personnel, such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical service technicians, disaster relief workers, military rescue personnel, and like first responders, are typically dispatched to an incident scene to remedy the emergency. These PS personnel typically utilize PS communication devices, both handheld and vehicle-portable, while working in the field. PS communication devices include, for example, land mobile radios (LMRs), such as handheld radios and/or vehicular radios, along with built-in and/or remote accessories, such as microphones, speakers, earpieces, headsets, and the like, to support wireless, two-way, voice and data communications. These primary, mission-critical PS devices and the infrastructure to support their operation are typically operated as part of a private, secure, and protected, proprietary PS network governed by a PS agency, e.g., a local government or department.
In such events, as well as many other circumstances in which non-PS personnel, e.g., security, retail, hospitality and social service personnel, are required to interact with the public in the course of their duties, it is beneficial, and often mandatory, to make an audio/video recording of the event for use as subsequent confirmation of exactly what transpired during the event. It has been proposed to support a video camera on a police officer and/or in a vehicle to capture and store images of the event for use as evidence to justify an arrest.
However, the operation of such cameras is very limited. The body-worn camera may be free-running and constantly recording, in which case, the working lifetime is limited when batteries are used to supply the power, and/or older captured images may be lost when the storage capacity is small and is overwritten, and/or images may be captured when nothing of interest is occurring. The body-worn camera may be actuated by pressing a record button, but there may be situations where the officer either forgets, or is unable, to press the record button. The field of view (FOV) of the body-worn camera is typically unidirectionally directed in a forward direction, which is of little value in capturing images in other directions, i.e., behind the officer. Likewise, the vehicle-supported camera is unidirectionally directed in a forward direction and may not be pointed in the direction of most interest.
Accordingly, there is a need to alleviate the aforementioned drawbacks by automatically controlling, and expanding the scope of, the operation of a body-worn camera for capturing images of an event in which the user, such as a PS person, is engaged.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and locations of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The method and apparatus components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.